Jackie O’s old fashioned views heard

Thursday

A half-century ago, millions of American women sat transfixed before their black-and-white television sets, mesmerized by one of the most famous TV broadcasts in history.

It wasn’t the tour of the White House that attracted them — it was the guide giving it. In 1962, First lady Jacqueline Kennedy had captivated the nation, yet few had heard her utter more than a peep. So on that Valentine’s Day, Americans were riveted. Eighty million people watched. She probably could have sat in the West Wing and read from Robert’s Rules of Order. It wouldn’t have mattered.

Flash forward to 2011. This time, it was the daughters of those women who sat transfixed before their television sets. This time, we heard the real Jackie behind the pearls and pillbox hats. After almost 50 years, Americans finally have a window into one of the most enigmatic women of the second half of the 20th century.

We learn that Jackie was happy with the success of the White House tour — not for her, but because her husband, President John F. Kennedy, was proud. We learn that this well-bred, intelligent first lady claimed to have no political opinions of her own, aside from those of her husband. We learn that she disdained women who sought power for themselves and was seemingly flummoxed by them.

“Jack never made me feel that I was a liability to him, but I was,” she said. “Then we got in the White House, all the things that I’d always done suddenly became wonderful. Because it made him so happy, it made me so happy.”

An extraordinary, seven-part interview of Mrs. Kennedy was released yesterday, 47 years after it was conducted, when she was 34 and a widow of just three months. The eight-and-a-half hours of interviews had been kept private at her request and left in the care of her daughter, Caroline, who thankfully released them unedited.

Much has been made of the tart and sometimes snarky commentary Jackie delivered on heads of state and former presidents. In her distinctive, breathy cadence, she called Charles de Gaulle an “egomaniac.” Indira Gandhi was “a real prune — bitter, kind of pushy, horrible woman.” The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a “phony” and a “terrible” man.

Those views are tantalizing both for the dish value and because they’re uttered by a demure, elegant woman who never let the public know what she was thinking. More fascinating, though, were her views on the roles of women, as they provide a glimpse of a world we’ve long left behind, even though some idealize that world today.

It was the early days of feminism and a year after the publication of “The Feminine Mystique” by Betty Friedan. Judging from the tapes, though, the first lady was having none of it.

She described her marriage as “rather terribly Victorian or Asiatic” and her goal as a wife to provide “a climate of affection and comfort and détente.” As for her political views, Holy Gloria Steinem!

“I remember I said it in an interview once,” she recalled, “and all these women — we got all these irate letters — someone said, ‘Where do you get your opinions?’ And I said, ‘I get all my opinions from my husband.’ Which is true. How could I have any political opinions, you know? His were going to be the best. And I could never conceive of not voting for whoever my husband was for.”

Perhaps most cringe-worthy were her descriptions of strong women such as Clare Boothe Luce and Madame Nhu of South Vietnam. Jackie seemed genuinely perplexed that these women sought power because “they were attractive to men” and thus, presumably, needed nothing more.

“Why do they have this queer thing for power?” she asked, suggesting in a whisper that they might be lesbians.

Jackie’s views would change, of course. In her later years, she was a book editor who would tell Ms. magazine that women can’t live through men. Hallelujah.

Yesterday, Caroline Kennedy told “Good Morning America” that her two daughters were “absolutely horrified” when they listened to their grandmother say she got all her opinions from her husband.

“Did she really think that?” they asked Ms. Kennedy.

Some defenders now claim that Jackie was simply projecting the image expected of females at the time. Even if that’s true — which I doubt — it hardly makes it any better.

The truth is, like many females of her time, Jackie Kennedy was able to grow and evolve with the aid of the women’s movement. As we listen once more to an iconic voice that transcends the years, it’s a message worth remembering — and honoring.

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